“Neither did the biblio...worthies themselves allege much tangible objection against the work offered to their acceptance,--which they yet seemed unanimous in rejecting; excepting that there was something new and queer about "the thing" they did not like! They could not say exactly what it was--but it was not written in the way Lady This, That, or the Other (it was the time of the supremacy of fashionable slip-slop) "wrote things!”
Source: Mauleverer s Divorce, Vol. 2 of 3
“Anatomy of Typos (Sonnet)
It took me a 100 books to realize this,
typos are not a stain upon literature,
typos are ornament of literature,
sweet reminders of human endeavor.
It's great to have literature without typos,
like it's great to have a life without regrets.
But in actuality, only the dead have no regrets,
only the uncreative make no typographical mistakes.
There are typos that are grievous, hence,
need correcting, but most typos are harmless.
Repulsed by typos means repulsed by literature,
repulsed by regrets means repulsed by existence.
Typos are the ornament of literature,
regrets are the ornament of life.
To make peace with regrets is the beginning of life,
to make peace with typos is to empower literary light.”
Source: The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology
“Typos are not a stain upon literature, typos are ornament of literature.”
Source: The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology
“Perhaps we women are more willing to break the ice. Two things that made this possible most often in many of our lives were intimate friendship and reading.”
Source: How Reading Changed My Life
“Democracy or reading, democracy of space: our public library tradition, wherever we live in the wide world, was incredibly hard-won for us by the generations before us and ought to be protected, not just for ourselves but in the name of every generation after us.”
Source: Public Library and Other Stories
“In a world where we spend ever more of our time staring at screens, blocking out even our most intimate and proximate human contacts, public institutions with open-door policies compel us to pay close attention to people nearby. After all, places like libraries are saturated with strangers, people whose bodies are different, whose styles are different, who make different sounds, speak different languages, give off different, sometimes noxious, smells. Spending time in public social infrastructures requires learning to deal with these differences in a civil manner.”
Source: Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life
“The accessible physical space of the library is not the only factor that makes it work well as social infrastructure. The institution's extensive programming, organized by a professional staff that upholds a principled commitment to openness and inclusivity, fosters social cohesion among clients who might otherwise keep to themselves.”
Source: Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life
“I exercised my mental muscles in the library, and lo and behold, I transformed myself from a casual reader into a focused one. So it was more than just free books, but also free space and a culture that reinforced settling down, deep reading, thinking, imagining, and exploring with my mind. I am no doubt a writer today because I had a place to go as a kid, where I knew stories were essential, and where everybody also reveled in the wonder within books.”
Source: Crossing Borders: Personal Essays
“Public libraries have succumbed to the same pressures that have overwhelmed the basic cultural functions of museums and universities, aims that should remain what they were, not because the old ways are always better but because in this case they were the right ones: the sustaining of standards, the preservation of quality, the conservation of literacy's history, the education of the heart, eye and mind. Now libraries devote far too much of their restricted space, and their limited budget, to public amusement. It is a fact of philistine life that amusement is where the money is.”
“Look at all the books in this place. Every one of them is inside you. And you're inside them."
"Sweetheart. It's a public library, not my private library. It needs people."
"They got out of the habit is all."
"The world has changed."
"No, everybody needs a story, Miss Perkins. That's something that never, ever changes.”
Source: Harry's Trees